The Best Little Cat House in Rome!

This has to be both the
most interesting as well
as oldest cat shelter in
the world! Years ago
you saw hundreds of
feral cats roaming the
Roman Forum; today,
not a one. Why? Because a saint of a woman decided to gather them all up and move them to a far safer and better location, where they can be treated, fixed, fed, whatever. Their new home is remarkable: a 2000 year-0ld set of Roman ruins, in the middle of the city, only a mile from the old place at the Forum. The cats have free run of the entire ruins (about half a city block) with plenty of shelter to get out of the rain, avoid winos, etc. For those cats with disabilities (and there are many), the woman has an indoor shelter, actually underneath the ruins! Here she treats dozens of blind, crippled, and deformed cats, most of which have been abandoned by "owners." The one you see here has 3 legs, and it barely slows him down at all.
Imagine my reaction to this unanticipated discovery. Here I am, the catwoman of Waterloo, volunteering every Saturday at a wonderful shelter here in Belgium. Not a Saturday passes by that I don't spend the entire afternoon telling Rick all my cat stories. He is always patient, altho I can tell he'd rather be discussing the latest great book he's reading, and he never tells me to "cease and desist" from all these tales of utter joy or woe. You'd think 4 days in Rome on a getaway with me that the last thing he'd want to do is visit a shelter, but that's exactly what he did, all the while keeping it a surprise from me. That's my husband...what can I say?
To learn more or see for yourself what this shelter is all about, visit these websites:
www.catsofrome.it or www.romancats.com.
Ciao!

Tired of Flat

Living for the past 17 months in a country where the average elevation is measured in inches, it's nice to see real mountains every once in awhile, even from 35,000 feet in the air. These pictures were taken on our flight home from Rome this morning, probably somewhere over the Grenoble, France, area.

It Almost Makes You Want to be Catholic

Whether you're Catholic or not, if you're into sheer size, pageantry, and amazing artwork and architecture, it just doesn't get any better than St. Peter's and the Vatican. The church itself, the largest in the world in overall size, looks more like a palace than a place of worship, if for no other reason than the general lack of pews and people praying - tourists probably outnumber worshippers about 10,000 to one. Whatever it most resembles, it is a jaw-dropping sight, whether it's your first or fifty-first visit. The Vatican museums, to include the Sistine Chapel, are unparalleled. The 400 year-old square in front of the church (640 feet wide!) is an architectural marvel, even by today's standards. It may be the smallest country in the world (you can walk it end-to-end in a few minutes), but it's huge on artistic beauty!

Livin' La Dolce Vita!

We just returned from 4 marvelous days in Rome - one of the real highlights of our European tour. So much to see; so many miles to walk; so many aching feet and legs. But it was all worth it. Nowhere else melds ancient history so well into a modern metropolis and it's a photographer's dream come true. So much so that we'll have to break this one up into several different posts. This one we will call our Postcard Shots.

Nearby Winter Wonderland

Just a few miles south of here is the ruined Villers-la-Ville abbey, which just turned 800 years old. It was the largest Cistercian abbey in all Belgium, at one time housing 300 monks. It was later ransacked at least three times by invaders from three different countries. And we think today's tourists are hard to handle!
In summer they put on concerts and even opera in the "back yard," but we are a long way from that now, both calendar-wise and temperature-wise. It hasn't gotten above 35 degrees in our area for over two weeks now and we see the sun...well...uh...never, or so it seems. (These pictures were taken exactly a year ago).